Lhuntse

Lhuntse is the district almost nobody visits and every Bhutanese knows about, for two reasons: the royal family comes from here, and so does the country's most valuable textile.

Dungkar and the Wangchuck line

The Wangchuck dynasty traces its ancestry to the village of Dungkar in the Kurtoe region of northern Lhuntse — the family of Pema Lingpa's descendants from which Jigme Namgyel, father of the first king, came. The connection makes this remote, thinly populated dzongkhag the symbolic ancestral homeland of the monarchy, and Kurtoe a name with more weight in Bhutan than its population of a few thousand would suggest.

Lhuntse Dzong

Lhuntse Dzong stands on a ridge high above the Kurichu river, reached by a spur road that climbs off the valley floor through terraced fields. Founded in 1654, it is one of the more dramatically sited fortresses in Bhutan — small, unrestored in feel, and almost never busy. From the courtyard the land falls away into a gorge on three sides.

Khoma and kushuthara

The village of Khoma, an hour beyond the dzong, is the home of kushuthara — the intricately brocaded silk kira worn by Bhutanese women on the most formal occasions, and the most prized handwoven cloth in the country. Nearly every household in Khoma has a backstrap loom under the eaves, and a single full kushuthara can take a skilled weaver months to a year to complete, which is why the best examples sell for the price of a car. Visitors are welcome to sit with the weavers and watch the supplementary-weft technique that makes the patterns appear to float on the surface of the cloth.

Getting there

Lhuntse is reached by a long side road north from Mongar, roughly three to four hours each way on mountain switchbacks, which is why most eastern itineraries skip it. Come if you want weaving, if you want an eastern dzong entirely to yourself, or if you are pushing on to the remote treks of the northeast. Bring cash — there is very little tourist infrastructure, and the pleasure of the place is precisely that.